Drink, deception and the death of an MP

Fiona Jones was a bright New Labour MP who had been tipped for a ministerial post. But her short-lived Westminster career was blighted by ruthless infighting, allegations of election fraud and, finally, alcoholism. Last week she was found dead. What happened? Patrick Barkham reports

Labour MP Fiona Jones leaves the High Court in 1999 after winning her appeal against her conviction for election expenses fraud. Photo: Toby Melville/PA

Her career, it seems, began to unravel almost from the moment she was pictured at the left shoulder of Tony Blair on the steps of Church House in the triumphant aftermath of Labour's election victory. For Fiona Jones, that heady photocall in 1997, when she appeared with her leader and almost all 101 of her fellow women Labour MPs, was the zenith of a political journey that had begun as a child in Liverpool, where her father was friends with Eric Heffer, the legendary leftwing Labour MP. That photo was also when the sniping started.

"People bitched that she'd muscled her way next to Blair in that photo, but she laughed about it because he'd stood near her," her husband Chris told the News of the World last weekend. Jones, the former MP for Newark, was last week found dead in bed at home, less than a month before her 50th birthday. Her death certificate recorded she was killed by "alcoholic liver disease". Her husband, a local radio DJ, was quick to point to a culture of heavy drinking at the House of Commons and an extraordinary court battle over her election expenses as being to blame. "If she had not become an MP she would be here today," he said. "It was Fiona's greatest achievement and dream. But ultimately it killed her."

Newark was not even a Labour target seat when Jones, a former television journalist, won the Labour nomination despite being from outside the county - she lived in Lincolnshire with her husband and two young sons, now 14 and 17. A Roman Catholic, she grew up on a traditional Labour housing estate in Liverpool (she campaigned against abortion, appearing with Lord Longford at a conference fringe meeting). The family moved to Lincolnshire, where she became a local Labour councillor and first ran for parliament with an unsuccessful challenge to the Tories in the safe rural seat of Gainsborough and Horncastle. Despite her old Labour heritage, Jones was typical of a new generation of Labour candidate - a professional parachuted into a promising seat. Blonde-haired, and typically described by former colleagues as bubbly, energetic and even magnetic, in Newark she ousted the sitting Conservative with a 10.2% swing in 1997, on a par with the unexpectedly high national swing. Declaring that MPs were "out of touch" and vowing to change parliament from "a confrontational gentlemen's club", she was earmarked, colleagues say, as ministerial material. Jack Straw, then home secretary, even described her as "brilliant" for her work at tackling anti-social behaviour at the party conference in 1997.

Geraldine Smith, MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, recalls exchanging thrilled conversation while standing next to Jones for that photocall on May 7, six days after the Labour landslide. "It was a very exciting day for her and any MP to see all those women that had made it to parliament, chatting to Tony Blair," she says. The newly elected women went on to a reception at No 11.

But with the unwelcome "Blair babe" tag (marginally better than the Sun's "Blair's backwenchers" headline) came resentment. Even in victory, Jones had made powerful enemies in her local party. She beat Gill Dawn, then leader of Newark and Sherwood district council, to the Labour nomination. Dawn was local, traditional Labour; Jones a New Labour outsider. When Jones accepted financial support from a local businessman who once backed the Tories, old Labour loyalists were dismayed. The local party became divided.

"The party is still split," says Dawn, who is now an independent councillor. "It was horrific." Jones's former agent, Des Whicher, now 81, believes the trouble started when Jones beat Dawn. "One is not allowed to say women fight like cats," he says, but Dawn "moved heaven and earth to make life uncomfortable for Fiona." The pair certainly fell out, meeting shortly before Jones was elected when Labour's new candidate became concerned at gossip circulating in Newark about her character. Jones, Dawn claimed, threatened to finish her political career if Dawn did not support her.

Barely a month after she was elected, Jones's defeated Lib Dem rival raised questions about her election expenditure. It triggered a police investigation and a court case that, her colleagues believe, fatally undermined her work in the House of Commons and her chances of ever settling in. She was "very conscientious", says Whicher, and got to work, tabling written questions and holding surgeries every Friday. Soon, however, she was mocked in the press for being the "parliamentary virgin", because she became the last of the 242 new MPs to make her maiden speech in the Commons.

"Having endured through gritted teeth being dubbed a 'Blair's babe', I am grateful at least to have the opportunity to relinquish for ever the title of being the last virgin in the House," she quipped when she finally did, in January 1998. By that time, however, she was embroiled in allegations that her election victory was thanks to her lavishing £22,000 on her campaign, far in excess of her £8,905 limit. Ignominiously, she became the first MP to be prosecuted for electoral fraud for 140 years. In March 1999, she was found guilty and summarily stripped of her seat. A key prosecution witness was Dawn.

"There was a faction within the local party and part of the problem was Fiona wasn't clear who her friends and supporters were," says Paddy Tipping, MP for the neighbouring Sherwood constituency. "She felt very isolated from her local party and felt the party locally and nationally didn't give her enough support." Tipping reckons the national party did help her - funding her court case - but others disagree. "The party nationally and locally threw Fiona to the wolves, and if Tony can't sleep at night it should be about this," writes another former class-of-97 ex-Labour MP, Jane Griffiths, on her blog. "A lot of people in the Labour party turned their backs on her," says her husband. Whicher, who was prosecuted and cleared alongside Jones, recalls that Labour officials told the media the party accepted the guilty verdict minutes after it was delivered, while he and Jones were still deciding whether to appeal.

They did, and a month later won. Jones was reinstated as an MP. She was greeted with cheers in the chamber when she returned but, in retrospect, says Tipping, perhaps her colleagues didn't give her enough support when she came back. "I don't think anyone recognised what a fragile condition she was in," he says. "Her whole career in politics was overshadowed by that case and she never really had a chance to establish close contacts," says Smith. "She strived all her life to be an MP and it was cruelly snatched away from her. She was a very bright MP who could have made a contribution. I'm sure in other circumstances she could have been a government minister by now."

Her husband says she "hardly drank at all before she was elected", but the Commons culture and pressures of the court case led her to start drinking vodka when she was at home - she chose the spirit because it was odourless and her sons would not smell it. In parliament, he says, she downed whisky because nobody would raise an eyebrow at the whiff of booze on her breath. Her former colleagues, however, do not offer any tales of epic Commons binges. "She was a very bubbly, attractive woman in many, many ways and enjoyed the socialising," says Tipping. "There are some of my colleagues who I have seen worse for wear, but not Fiona." Another Nottinghamshire MP, Graham Allen, who as a party whip escorted her back into the Commons after her reinstatement, called her "a lovely, bubbly, magnetic person" and says he wasn't aware of her drinking until he heard of her death. "Having been around the House for the best part of 30 years it's not the phenomenon that it was. It used to be appalling," he says.

"Nobody apart from close family and myself knew how difficult a time it was," says Whicher. Press were camped on her doorstep. He claims that not only was a local Labour "faction" set against her but the local paper refused to give her any positive coverage. Whicher is convinced that if the fraud case hadn't happened, she would have won again in 2001. Instead, with local party supporters divided over Jones, the Conservatives retook the seat.

"Up until she lost the seat I know she had been drinking more than was advisable," says Whicher. "There were occasions when she didn't turn up to things when she was 'unwell'. I think 'unwell' was a bit of a euphemism. It was never out of control but it became out of control in the last couple of years." Although she visited the party conference in 2005, she became convinced her career was over. Representing herself in legal action against Nottinghamshire police over the fraud case, her bid for "damages" was branded "hopeless" by the judge and was thrown out of court, leaving her with £45,000 costs. That year, she also gave a tabloid interview in which she claimed she was approached by a cabinet minister who asked her for sex in return for a government job.

When Chris tried to get his wife to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings she refused because she feared being recognised. By the end, she was just drinking and sleeping, nursed by her husband and her two sons, now teenagers. "It sounds odd, but sadly we had got used to that kind of thing," he says.